


A Deep Echo in Me

by Grayhoodiesrule



Series: Unnamed [1]
Category: Alien Series, Alien: Covenant
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Androids, F/M, Introspection, Philosophy, Slow Burn, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-03
Updated: 2017-07-03
Packaged: 2018-11-22 22:01:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11389269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Grayhoodiesrule/pseuds/Grayhoodiesrule
Summary: Walter and Daniels have a late night conversation. Cryosleep will commence in 20 hours 33 minutes.





	A Deep Echo in Me

"I'm far too slow to pick up on hints, I guess. I flirted back eventually, when I did get it. I said, 'I like your beer belly and beard, let's get coffee.'"

The synthetic says it all with a straight face, not even a hint of a smile. 

"You didn't!"

He finds it extremely gratifying, to watch her face break into laughter as his words sink in. 

"No, I didn't. But I could say that I wanted to." 

It's after hours, very late actually. Walter thinks about how tired she looks, her pallor accentuated by the dark circles under her eyes.  
He sees her physiological need for sleep very clearly, but decides not to address it in favor of supporting her psychological need for company and socializing. Besides, she will get all the sleep she needs and more just in a few hours time. 

_By this time tomorrow, she will be deep in hypersleep._

There is an unforeseen narrative of thought that ensues at the background of his awareness. Unforeseen, but not completely unprecedented either. In it’s turn, it initiates a distinct stimuli and response cascade at the synapses of the artificial nerve circuits.  
In reality Walter feels something similar to a hollow void forming in his midsection. 

_What do I feel?_ Uneasy. 

An idea floats up to the surface of his consciousness.  


_I will be missing these conversations during my years-long assignment._

He wants to examine this sensation. Yet he's distracted again by the way she has thrown her head back in laughter, and by the way her shoulders shake. She's exploding with it, and he can see that she has begun to tear up. He can't help but wonder, what it could feel like for him, if he had the ability to lose himself to any kind of emotion with such abandon. Lose himself in laughter.

"Daniels, you’re crying again.”

"I know, I know! I just can't help it," she almost sobs, "it's too sick. I can't believe he actually suggested that to you! And you… oh fuck, Walter, you're going to kill me one day… making me laugh so much…seriously. _And_ making me smoke your mutated weed." 

She looks at him fondly through wet eyelashes. "You didn't make the whole thing up, did you?"

"I wouldn't be able to. I don't possess the imaginative capabilities to do so. But I did take the liberty to play with the possible responses I might have used.” His eyes crinkle. 

"Huh...” 

"He proceeded to return to my unit every week for the next three months to ask if I was ready yet to engage in a... relationship with him.”

“How do you even put up with _us_? _I_ wouldn't be able to." She takes another shaky breath and wipes her cheeks using both palms.

"It’s just my programming. I believe, I was made to put up with almost any possible thing people may come up with". 

He says it with a smile in his pleasant rumble, but somehow, she can sense an undercurrent, a thought, a self-reflection in his words. Or does she?  
This sobers her up a little, even as she still feels the soothing aftertaste of a good laughter lingering in her body. 

"Please don't tell me it's the pizza guy!! The one we had when we were training at the Weyland space-centre?" 

"Yes," he nods.

"Oh, man. I can feel your pain," Daniels says, "As a woman, I can relate. Did he even realize that you are…?"

"Oh, yes, I think so."

"You can't blame the poor pervert though, I mean, look at you," she waves a hand in his general direction. "Rosenthal always says that these good looks are being wasted." 

_While admiring your solid ass._ She adds mentally. 

"Well, I work out."  
He delivers the line in a credible imitation of Hallet's voice. 

Daniels snorts. 

"Ha ha, you are too funny. You know, I can tell you honestly now, I have never expected you to be when we first met. Funny, I mean…"

Walter seems to take a few seconds to process this. 

"I never expected to find a friend on my mission,” he finally replies, serious again, "Or for a friendship to feel so good." 

He says the words not as a compliment, but as a simple acknowledgment of a fact. There is another side to this truth, but it eludes him somehow. He doesn't know why it makes him momentarily avert his eyes away from hers. It feels as if a propriety behavior protocol has been breached, although it hasn't, by any parameter. 

_A friend. Not friends. He actually means me._

Her pupils widen only infinitesimally, but he notices anyway.

"Yes," she agrees, pleasantly surprised by his words. If it was a human sitting here with her, a speculation might have formed in her mind that the guy is hitting on her… Something in the way he’s solemnly gazing at her now from under his sweatshirt hood. 

_Why does he like to pull it up over his head like this? Is he cold? Can he even get cold? I've never asked him._

But it's only Walter— a posture a tiny bit too straight, hands lying slightly too symmetrically over his knees-- and she discards the thought. 

"I know what you mean," Daniels says.

It makes her remember how their duties brought them to work side by side, a polite distance at first, then discovering a keen mind, then a kind heart. The countless times she found a confidant in him. Spilling out her guts after a horrible fight with her husband. After receiving the bad news. She wonders if she's the only one among the crew who seeks out Walter for emotional support. Probably not. He listens and responds in such a way that made her feel understood. Finally understood. She likes and trusts him as much as she likes Tennessee, or even Jacob, and that means something. 

She strongly suspects that the overpowering sense of closeness she experiences in his presence is a byproduct of the biosocial compatibility stamp feature. It’s a part of him as much as the blue pigment of his retina. DNA Connection, Consciousness Imprint, and all this shit. All that he is-a result of a good programming. A good science.  
  
_But knowing that the cake is made of sugar doesn't make it less sweet, right? And how would you recognize the moment when imitation crosses the line into truth? Either way, I'm glad he's here._

"How long has it been?" she muses out loud. 

"We first met 22 months, 14 days and…"

"Hey, don't go all android on me now”

He blinks and raises his eyebrows, then smiles. He understands. "About 22 months, then. Three weeks in space."

"It's passed so fast."

"It did."

"It always does when you have so much to do."

She stretches her body, sliding her bum lower on the hard, plastic chair. Her muscles feel so stiff and her skin so cold from the air-conditioning; it's as though she's already frozen. She runs a hand through her hair, fighting off exhaustion. Wanting to stay for a little longer.  
She thinks about asking him if he might get lonely.

"So, a busy day for you tomorrow, and then you will finally have some quiet," she prompts, and doesn't use a direct question. He will speak his mind if he wants to.

He only nods and changes the subject. "How is Captain Branson doing?" 

"I think he's coming down with something. Fell asleep early today."

"I'll check on him tomorrow." 

“Good luck with that,”she snorts,”he’s difficult to treat. As you have noticed.”

They sit quietly for a few moments, both of them reluctant to leave just yet. Through a portal to their left, unrealistically close and vivid, an orange planet, against the velvetness of space is peering back at Daniels.

"It's funny how there are no stars. On Earth I could always see them, but not up here. " She says cheerlessly.

The synthetic follows her gaze.

"Not quite. You _can_ see them, but while we are still traveling trough our solar system, those objects closest to us, obscure the more distant stars. The reason is contrast. The sun as viewed from near Earth has an apparent magnitude of -26.7. The brightest star, Sirius, is a -1.5. Since the magnitude scale is inverse log, that means that the sun is 10^25 times brighter than the next brightest star."

The planet floats up and away until the portal is completely empty again.

"Walter, what are we doing here?" she asks quietly. All laughter gone now. 

He could have taken her meaning literally, but thinks that he had seen this lost and haunted look before, and he already knows what it means. She fears the future. With Daniels, distraction sometimes helps. 

"You just reminded me of something I read once. Would you like me to share it with you?" 

“Sure, what is it?” 

He takes the unnecessary deep breath to simulate human speech before he begins, 

“We take off into the cosmos, ready for anything: for solitude, for hardship, for exhaustion, death. Modesty forbids us to say so, but there are times when we think pretty well of ourselves. And yet, if we examine it more closely, our enthusiasm turns out to be all a sham. We don't want to conquer the cosmos, we simply want to extend the boundaries of Earth to the frontiers of the cosmos. For us, such and such a planet is as arid as the Sahara, another as frozen as the North Pole, yet another as lush as the Amazon basin. We are humanitarian and chivalrous; we don't want to enslave other races, we simply want to bequeath them our values and take over their heritage in exchange. We think of ourselves as the Knights of the Holy Contact. This is another lie. We are only seeking Man. We have no need of other worlds. A single world, our own, suffices us; but we can't accept it for what it is. We are searching for an ideal image of our own world: we go in quest of a planet, a civilization superior to our own but developed on the basis of a prototype of our primeval past. At the same time, there is something inside us which we don't like to face up to, from which we try to protect ourselves, but which nevertheless remains, since we don't leave Earth in a state of primal innocence. We arrive here as we are in reality, and when the page is turned and that reality is revealed to us--that part of our reality which we would prefer to pass over in silence--then we don't like it anymore.”

She listens, transfixed by the timbre of the low voice, flowing in an old fairy-tale cadence, by the images his words evoke in her mind. Although his face stays perfectly impassive, his voice is entirely something else. And his eyes. He always has this way of looking sideways, but now his eyes are locked on her. She shouldn’t be feeling this hot and nausea like sensation rolling at the pit of her stomach, but his gaze seems too intense, and she does. It’s like if she’s falling, and Daniels catches her breath.

I apologize if it was too long or boring”

"No, no! It was wonderful. You are a very good story teller." She's fascinated as usual by his ability to recite whole texts in their entirety. 

She leans across the table towards him, eyeing him speculatively. 

"Don't tell me, I want to guess!"

"Go ahead." 

"Must be that German writer? I remember you telling me about him a while ago." She wrinkles her forehead, uncertain.

"You are correct! He’s Polish though."

Why should this make him feel so _pleased_? Something inside him just expanded in a satisfactory way. She could remember a factoid he had been telling her about almost a year ago. Does it matter? Unlikely, it does.

"When we get to Origae-6, and after we settle in, I'll have more time to read. I'll ask for more of your recommendations. You always had the best taste in books."

"I will be glad to."

He watches her eyelids flatter tiredly as she yawns. "As much as I'm enjoying your company, I'll have to suggest that you go sleep now. I will continue with my duties." 

"Yeah, you're right." She moves as if to rise up, but stays sitting, studying the brown patterns congealed at the bottom of a coffee mug.

The synthetic eyes slide over the imperfect features of her human face; her ridiculous fringe- he doesn't even know why, but the word _'ridiculous'_ is what he's thinking-- her long neck, hunched shoulders, chest, and her white-skinned hands playing with an empty cup. He takes her all in and feels contented, fulfilled. Though at the same time he feels how that emptiness is growing and forming beneath his carbon fiber rib cage. He feels that just sitting there, smiling politely is not enough, that he needs to _tell her_.   
Yet, his emotions are still trapped and unnamed inside the intricate net of his bio-mechanical mind. Like a distant echo.  
A little push.  
A few quiet words spoken in the vast, windy darkness. A light trace of fingers on his skin. A faltering gentle melody.  
_His own_.  
It’s all what it will take to make him cross the threshold. However, it’s in the future yet. 

That's why he says nothing, and Daniels stands up. 

"See you tomorrow!" She pulls down playfully at the rim of his hood. 

"Goodnight, Daniels."

**Author's Note:**

> I attempted to give some background to their relationship and an explanation of why they have this special bond. Something to help make sense of why he follows her around. In this story they woke Walter up earlier so he can be part of the team from the very beginning of their training for the expedition while still on Earth.  
> The seeds for the drastic change in his so called programming/ neural thought processes/ consciousness are already there, waiting for the events on Paradise to trigger them to go beyond the tilting point. He does feel “something” very undefined and most of the time he disregards it. On the surface, nothing shows up yet for Daniels to observe. 
> 
> Walter is trying out some improvised responses with Daniels, because I really believe he's capable of them, when given an opportunity or when the situation doesn't require him to follow the strict, scripted responses. I also believe that if Walter is capable of metaphorical thinking (if a note is off, the entire symphony is), he's most certainly capable of anything else. He did manage to play the flute eventually, didn’t he?


End file.
